


you rise with the sun

by monsooned (leovenus)



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, mostly an exercise in trying to make it work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:28:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25806625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leovenus/pseuds/monsooned
Summary: “Oh, darling Ferdinand,” she murmured, not cruel, never unkind. “It was never an easy weight to bear, a crown.”
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg/Hubert von Vestra, Ferdinand von Aegir/Edelgard von Hresvelg, Ferdinand von Aegir/Edelgard von Hresvelg/Hubert von Vestra, Ferdinand von Aegir/Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 6
Kudos: 56





	you rise with the sun

**Author's Note:**

> this did not set out to be what it became, but in the end it was very much a study and i spent 50% of the time Thinking And Rotating while the other 50% was spent writing...I adore all three of these characters very much, and so although this is short it is my sincerest wish that my thesis makes sense...
> 
> also I probably will be posting some extremely gratuitous edbt soon. why? brain use is hard. horny is free. but i am also infamously lazy so uhhhhhhhhh we will see. 

It seemed, at best, a minor inconvenience for the son of Duke Aegir to be in attendance with them at the academy.

Hubert drew himself up to his full height, glowering, as Ferdinand approached Edelgard - necessarily, the two of them. Edelgard, sensing the shift in his posture, excused herself from conversation with a boy of their class - some son of a knight or the other - and turned to him, patient as she ever was.

“Edelgard!” He carried himself with an indomitable air of confidence, a pushed out chest, some pithy uttering or the other about nobility often on his lips. Still Hubert noted the way students turned to watch him approach, admiring. His lip curled, a little; he didn’t see it.

“Ferdinand,” Edelgard greeted, graciously. “What brings you to search me out?”

He came to a stop just before them, weight shifting onto one leg as he rested a hand on his hip. “A duel,” he proposed grandly, “To prove that I am your better, for once and for all!”

Hubert twitched, but Edelgard stayed him with a touch of her hand to the outside of his wrist. Ferdinand was like a puppy nipping at her heels, his curious cocktail of respect and competitiveness not something dangerous.

Facing him, she flashed him a brilliant smile as she brushed a lock of snowy hair away from her face - deliberate, Hubert knew, because everything she did was carefully calculated, even if her arithmetic could sometimes be found wanting. Ferdinand’s gaze caught on the flash of exposed skin at her wrist as she brought her hand back down.

“I’m afraid I’m terribly held up attending to my duties,” she demurred smoothly, one ankle tucking itself behind the other. “I’m sure you understand. There are so many obligations we must see to before attending to personal wants, are there not?”

Blinking rapidly, Ferdinand seemed winded for a moment before he recovered, nodding eagerly. “That is true indeed,” he agreed. “If that is the case - far be it from me to stand between you and your noble duty.”

Something seemed to strike him, and an almost theatrical sorrow set itself in his large, vermillion eyes. “Please, let me keep you no longer - perhaps it was I who have erred in taking up so much of your time…”

The rest of his monologue was lost to distance as Edelgard bobbed a shallow curtsy - a flourish, nothing more - and set off down the corridor, Hubert hastening to match her pace with his.

“My lady,” Hubert said when they were some distance away, knowing she would detect his question. It was the closest he had come in recent years to feeling baffled.

She laughed, a smooth bell’s chime in those large empty halls. “Distracting him keeps him off my back longer,” she explained, slowing her step a fraction to share a look with him. Then she gave him that smile, degrees brighter than she had ever shown in the walls of their palace home, almost wild.

“Come,” she urged, impishly, even though he was already by her side. Could not leave if he was compelled. “We have _noble duties_ to attend to.”

\- ✧ -

It was difficult to remember that image of Ferdinand, now, bent to his side and pushing his hair out of his face as he clapped a bloodied hand to his mouth and gagged. Red caught in his hair, marred his skin, crept beneath the cover of his armour; sullied the bright of his own ginger, turning him grey.

“Ferdinand.”

“Ignatz,” he mumbled, feverishly. His eyes were fixed somewhere distant, almost unseeing. “Ignatz.”

He was shaking. Hubert tightened his grip on the other man’s shoulders, subtly tilting Ferdinand away from the corpse of the son of Victor. He had not known the man, was not so sure he would have grieved even if he had.

“You have killed before,” he said, in an attempt at something to say, then mentally flinched. Lady Edelgard often lectured him on his lack of tact; he could hear her, now, sighing in the back of his head. She had always been better with people; he tried again.

"Just - don't look," he blurted, and that wasn't right, either, but whether or not his words had anything to do with it the other man shook, another time, then sobered entirely, shrinking back into himself, weight still leaning against Hubert.

"I am on a battlefield," Ferdinand intoned, calm like the pools in the leisure gardens of Enbarr under a full moon, her luminescent countenance mirrored perfectly in their surface. There was blood above his right eye. Hubert suppressed a foreign, unwelcome urge to brush it away. "There is no place here for hesitation."

Woodenly he began to rise, and dutifully Hubert went with him.

It was what Lady Edelgard herself would say, a tenet Hubert had followed since the day she had asked to speak with him alone in her study, feigning a juvenile infatuation and twirling her hair around her fingers to get the knights to turn their heads away. But out of someone so like a day in the sun it felt cold, almost grotesque; a sparrow frozen to death in the midst of an Imperial winter.

He reached a hand out, past Ferdinand's ashen face, and sank a _Mire_ into the skull of a man whose lance was on track for Ferdinand's neck. The body crumpled to the ground, a gruesome shroud for the one that had already been lying there.

Ferdinand’s eyes bore into the space by his head. He had nothing further to say. They fought on.

\- ✧ -

Later, he caught sight of them speaking, sat together at a table in the shadow of the main gazebo, their bright heads of hair radiant in the sun. Curious, Hubert slowed to a stop by the window and watched, considering, for a while.

Ferdinand’s back was to him, but it meant he could see Lady Edelgard’s features well. She spoke as if deep in thought, her attention focused on him, pausing occasionally to sketch out things on a piece of paper between them. Then she stopped, eyes briefly turned skywards in thought, and posed a question to him, watching him keenly for a response.

He noted the way surprise and then approval bloomed over her face, and wondered briefly what it was that had been said. His father had been indolent and cruel in his exercise of power; he did not think Ferdinand was the same, but he had yet to be tested.

A smile had carved itself delicately into her features. She would doubtless tell him what he needed to know later. Hand toying absently with the cuff of a sleeve Hubert left; it would be dark soon, and there were preparations to be made if he was to make the fullest use of it.

\- ✧ -

His lady was often gentler, in these moments, when she took what she needed and gave in return. He felt that now, above her in her bed, the stolen hour drawn long by the languid cadence of their rhythm, the easy way she moved.

Hubert catalogued meticulously each of the minutest shifts in her expression, carving into his memory the image of her pale skin stark against dark sheets. Behind his eyelids he knew each of her scars as if they marred his own skin. They should have.

“You look troubled,” she murmured, brushing his hair out of his eye. Her hand lingered; he rested his cheek in her palm, kissing it, open-mouthed, felt her gaze heat as she watched.

“It is n -“

“ _Not_ nothing of import, I would imagine, to twist your features so.” Her other hand mapped his chest; he faltered, always helpless beneath her touch. “Come. I remember we said fewer secrets.”

Hubert fell silent, his habitual denial - the deflection that went _My attention will not waver again, my lady_ dying fast in his throat before it ever made it near his tongue. It was not what she wanted. She pulled him towards her, fingers dancing across the sensitive shell of his ear. “Hmm?”

It felt improper to say another’s name in a bed that was theirs. But it had never been anything less than an empire that they bore between them, and so even as he shifted his grip on her and let her guide him he murmured, “It concerns Ferdinand.”

Her gaze was always so bright. The restless creature in his chest twisted, batting at the bars of its cage when she kissed his neck, raked her fingers down his back, her silence bidding him to continue. “He is -“ He hesitated. “- tortured.”

 _What an ugly way to name a conscience_ , he thought, humourlessly, but there were tolls they all had to pay.

“A liability?” Edelgard asked the obvious question for them both, both hands cradling his head as he rocked into her, thumbs smoothing the line of his brow. She had seen it in his face; she shook her head, answering herself. “No, you do not believe so.”

He hadn’t settled on an answer, but she had always seen through him better than he could. It was almost an act of selfishness on his part, laying the question at her feet in trust that she would untangle the riddle. At a loss Hubert said no more, instead pressing their bodies closer together and murmuring prayers into her hair as she led them both to completion.

\- ✧ -

“I had not thought to find you here.”

A gash of orange against the blue of the sky. Hubert turned to face Ferdinand with a nod, the gladioli unwieldy in his arms.

“Lady Edelgard makes certain to pay tribute to the fallen,” he said, turning back to the line of tombstones. “I only ensure she needs not do it alone.”

“She is your conscience,” Ferdinand observed. “Yet you equally defy her orders if you find it appropriate to do so.”

“There are some things that can never be settled with kindness,” Hubert replied, eyes alighting heavy on the grave of Jeralt and Sitri Eisner before he could coax them away. “She would barter her own flesh for a perfect outcome. It is my due to never allow that.”

For once, it seemed as if Ferdinand had nothing to say. The conversation at a lull, Hubert moved to the next grave, and laid a single stalk upon it.

There was a shift in the air, and then an armoured glove on his forearm. Wordlessly Hubert halved his burden, handing the brilliant blooms into Ferdinand’s waiting arms, and they worked until the sky bruised and bled into night.

\- ✧ -

They were in conference in her study when Ferdinand came to them, throwing open the door without so much as a by-your-leave.

"Edelgard," he said, as he once so often did, prefacing their interactions with a gauntlet thrown at her feet. But no hasty declaration followed, only a stillness that felt like a plea. It stretched between them, hairsbreadth-thin, a tightrope far too taxed to walk.

Her gaze flickered, her brisk veneer melting into an apology that Hubert quietly excused. Then she turned to Ferdinand, regal, and in the kingdom that was her own they were ruler, subject. "Ferdinand."

He was a flame, worn down by the elements. He opened his mouth, and caved; no sound escaped, the fight sagging out of him as he stumbled towards her - towards them both, again, the way it always was, except now she went to meet him, reached out as he collapsed.

“Oh, darling Ferdinand,” she murmured, not cruel, never unkind. “It was never an easy weight to bear, a crown.”

She smoothed her hands through his vibrant mane, held his head to her where it had buried itself in the slope of her neck. Moulded to her tiny frame he bent almost unnaturally - looked, startlingly, like a child's broken plaything, beautiful despite being relegated to waste.

Edelgard held very still, impossibly careful, threading gloved fingers through his river of hair. She said nothing further as he wept, murmured apologies to her, to those who had fallen at their feet, for his ignorance and blind bravery all.

Hubert bowed his head, out of deference to the sight before him. He waited a beat, and then a further one, and when the air in the room had thickened so that it had become difficult to see he left, closing the door behind him.

\- ✧ -

“He is too gentle.”

“You have said that of me, often, and yet you are the only one.”

“If I may, your Majesty - he is nothing like you.”

“Of course, Hubert.” A breath like a laugh. “I lost that so many years ago.”

“It had become enough just for you to survive.”

“Perhaps.” Silence. “But it is different for him. He has a goodness to him remaining. A rare and precious thing.”

“It is as you say.”

“Hubert. Do me a favour, will you?”

“Yes?”

“Promise me you’ll protect it.” Pause. A slow, dragging breath. “We - one of us needs to be. Unsullied, as it were.”

A hand on her cheek, the gentle touch of brow to brow. “With my life, your Majesty.”

\- ✧ -

The war, on its face, was at an end. The Church had been pushed into hiding, the Kingdom and Alliance both cowed. In the light by the window sat a vase of forget-me-nots, interspersed delicately with baby’s breath and white finch. The Emperor turned a sheet over - written, coded, in her adviser’s hand - and sighed, leaning back into her chair as she rubbed tiredly at her eye.

“You’ll wrinkle early.” A shadow cast itself over her, a hand gently batting hers away. She unfurled into the touch, catching him by the wrist as he effected a stiff bow. “Lady Edelgard.”

“Hubert doesn’t sound like that,” she scolded, softly. “How are the ex-Kingdom territories?”

Ferdinand pursed his lips, and she caught a hold of his hair, admiring absently its lustre. “There is unrest, but I do not wish to increase Imperial presence. I believe diplomatic assurance is necessary if we are to encourage assimilation.”

She heard the in-between. “Will you go?” she asked, softly. “At least consult with Hubert first.”

“Hubert is occupied,” Ferdinand protested, “And at any rate would simply tell me which troops could be reallocated most quickly.”

“You would be correct.” A third voice joined them, as Hubert melted out of the shadows. He brought his hand to his chest and bowed, ever professional, even as Ferdinand brightened and Edelgard turned to him in welcome. “We can spare men from the Brionnac Plateau and Gloucester in a matter of days.”

As he straightened there was the faintest glimmer in his eye. Edelgard untangled herself and went to him, eyes scanning his form as if to check for injury. He caught a hand, pressing the briefest kiss to the skin there, then shook his head minutely, meaning, _I’m fine._

“We won’t, though,” she said by way of response, worry satisfied. “Unless you disagree?”

Hubert looked away from her to Ferdinand, who had come to rest just beside them, patient as he ever was. Some of the unease had eased from his visage, ever since Edelgard had announced their victory at Fhirdiad.

“If you believe it is the right course,” he said, very slowly, almost uncertain. “But be cautious. Our -“ he coughed - “campaign has need of you. Perhaps you should take a larger guard.”

Ferdinand burst out laughing at that, a boisterous, lovely sound. It made Hubert colour purple, even as Ferdinand surged forward to take Hubert’s face into his hands, glowing like the sun.

“And I love you both, as well,” he declared, grandly. He loosed a hand, tugging Edelgard in by the waist, and finally Hubert relented, allowing the embrace. He pitched his voice higher - “I love you too, Ferdinand!” - and then dramatically low. “I am occasionally fond of you, you incorrigible pest. Oh, but isn’t this the most romantic union to ever be had!”

“Stop it,” Edelgard said, but did not move to extricate herself from his hold. Instead she leaned her head against Hubert’s chest, and peered up at Ferdinand critically. “Didn’t you say you were leaving, potentially to never return?”

Hubert smiled, very faintly. It was a good look on him, however rare.

“What her Majesty means to say,” he translated, “Is _take care, and hurry home_.”

“I did not,” Edelgard protested. “You are _projecting_ , Hubert von Vestra - I will not have you putting words into my mouth - ”

“We can put things into _his_ mouth,” Ferdinand suggested, coyly, and then there was another ruckus altogether, a cacophonous squabble, quelled only by the alarmed knocking of a castle guard.

Later, they lay tangled, drenched in heavy moonlight. Hubert counted the restful breaths of his lady, his own head on Ferdinand’s chest, and knew they would see the new world through.

**Author's Note:**

> as always if you would like to talk to me i am [here](http://twitter.com/monsoonflame)!! thank you for reading :)


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